"We can't, Charlie. It's too dangerous," Meeks said. He was folding away his dirty clothes and setting them out for laundry collection.
"Oh, come on, Meeks." Charlie turned to the other three, Todd, Pitts, and Knox, who were settled throughout the dorm room. "How about it, guys? One last meeting in honor of Neil."
"They know where we meet, Charlie," Pitts said.
"So what? Nolan won't go into the forest and wait for us to show up," Charlie reasoned. Meeks collapsed beside Knox on his bed. The pile of laundry slumped over.
"Charlie-" Todd's voice trailed in at last, but he choked on his words before they could slip out. It would be redundant anyway; they already knew a meeting would be agony without Neil.
Charlie waited for Todd to go on with his brow raised, but plowed on when nothing more came. Todd had simply blinked his distressed blink, and looked away.
"Hey, all of you are safe. But I'm on my way out of here in three hours." A frail plea was threaded into Charlie's otherwise hale voice. "One last meeting of the Dead Poets Society, and then I'm gone."
Suddenly Todd felt, trying to rub him raw once more, every edged word out of an authority's mouth since Neil died. They chafed at him, they left him sore and bruised, and with a bitter taste in his head. So he said, "Okay. Okay."
Charlie's face lit up for the first time since that bleak news, and he crowed, "Look at that! Todd approves. Who else's in?"
The others were silent for a long time.
"Looks like it's you and me, pal."
In the face of being one of only two, Todd wanted to take it back, but he couldn't. He owed it to both Charlie and Neil.
But the other three, almost in unison, finally cast their ballots. All were going.
"Okay, break's in half an hour. Get ready, and meet me back here," Charlie commanded.
"We'll have to sneak past the croquet players," Todd noted. "They hang around out there even when they can't play." He was once again surprised by his lack of stutter. It happened less around the other boys these last few days. Perhaps it was a side effect of shared heartache.
"Nah. Give 'em a chocolate bar, and they didn't see anything," Knox said.
Charlie grinned. "How'd you learn that, Knoxious?"
"Little birdie told me."
"What bird was that? Your obsession with Chris?"
"Funny," Knox deadpanned.
In the interim, Todd perched on the edge of his bed and leafed through Five Centuries of Verse. He'd woken up with it on Neil's bed, facing his side of the room. He wasn't sure what Mr. Keating was trying to say with his placement, but he suspected Todd was involved, so he accepted the book of poems and kept it carefully stored away in the crack between his bed and the wall.
He faintly wondered if Charlie intended that they read any poetry at the meeting, and where they would find it in the short span of time they had, but his want for expression won out, and he gave in to a desire that chipped away at his nervousness since the idea of a meeting was brought up. It chipped away so much, his reading anxiety was nothing more than dust on his shoulders.
See, there was a poem, one he stumbled upon while skimming the book with Neil one listless evening. It didn't appear to speak to Neil—his interpretation seemed to make the poem about Jesus—but it clung to Todd. He didn't know why, as he had no real-life connection to the second and final stanza of the poem before the day of Neil's death, but nevertheless, it sunk it's eagle claws into him and never let go.
Finally, just over midway through the book, Todd found the poem. He tucked into the yellowed page a scrapped bit of Chemistry homework, and began to relace his shoes.
Fortunately, the walk to the cave was free of Neilisms—no fond memories to sift through with rheumy eyes and knotted throats. The cave, on the contrary, was smothering to their already drooping spirits. It was dark and dank and the stream outside was for once not peaceful, but far too noisy. Still, they took seats against the stacked stones and began the final gathering of the Welton Dead Poets Society.
It was a blur for Todd, both in time and sight, but he'll always remember seeing Charlie sob a horrible sound into his half-remembered poem. Half-remembered, but the point was not lost. He'll always remember Steven, overwhelmed by Charlie's shaking control, wave away his turn to read. He'll always remember Gerard taking up the page with Meek's blemished scrawl and stumbling through both that poem and his own. Knox hadn't prepared one, he might remember, but Todd would always remember the arm Knox mantled over his shoulders when they began to tremble.
But the blurriest of all was his own poem. The time between standing on unsteady legs and dropping back down was lost for him. But the poem was not. The other boys' sniffling was not.
He had doubtless said,
.
The Great Man by Eunice Tietjens
I cannot always feel his greatness.
Sometimes he walks beside me, step by step,
And paces slowly in the ways-
The simple, wingless ways
That my thought treads. He gossips with me then
And finds it good;
Not as an eagle might, his great wings folded, be content
To walk a little, knowing it his choice,
But as a simple man,
My friend.
And I forget.
.
Then suddenly a call floats down
From the clear airy spaces,
The great, keen lonely heights of being.
Then he who was my comrade hears the call
And rises from my side, and soars,
Deep-chanting to the heights.
Then I remember
And my upward gaze goes with him, and I see
Far off against the sky
The glint of golden sunlight on wings.
.
And he'll certainly never forget the urge he felt to peer up through the hole in the cave ceiling, or what he spied against the sun-glow treetops when he did.